Invisible City, Port-au-Prince

Recording and sound creation workshop with blind and visually impaired people.During a week, we thought about the sounds of the city, with those who listen to it without seeing it: daily sounds, sounds that shape an identity and those that disturb it…
We walked, we listened, we recorded and we mapped the sounds.
I taught them how to use the recorders and microphones.
They introduced me their city, the taught me how to listen to it their way.

The last day, we did a “blind wandering” on the streets of Port-au-Prince to invert the roles for a moment: blind people guided the blindfolded public. We followed the course in silence, listening… it was full of sound pitfalls and some surprises. The sounds of the city were enriched with the sounds imagined by the participants. To those urban sounds, participants added dreamed sounds that were spreaded through the ice cream seller’s speakers (called the ‘Krem Mayi’, who use a speaker and a wheelbarrow to announce their selling). Our mapping journal and an iron tactile map that indicated the neighborhood sounds in braille, were shown at the Centre d’Art during a week. Each participant received a CD including the sounds we recorded during the workshop, as the sound memory of this week spent together.

Quinzaine Handicap et Culture (Disability and Culture Fortnight), Port au Prince (Haiti)Organized by the Théâtre Toupatou (Toupatou Theater), directed by Johny Sephirin, with the support of the SHAA (acronym in French for Haitian Society for the Blind), FOKAL (acronym in French for Knowledge and Liberty Foundation), Centre d’Art and Festival 4 Chemins.
From 2 to 9 June 2017 at Centre d’Art